Privacy Policy

Last updated: September 12, 2026

American Dogs (the “App” and website, operated by Fabrechew LLC, “we”, “us”, or “our”) provides a dog-walking and pet-care platform. This Privacy Policy explains what information we collect, how we use it, and the choices you have. By using American Dogs you agree to this Policy.

1. Information we collect

• Account information: name, email address, phone number, password (stored encrypted/hashed), and your ZIP code / neighborhood.
• Dog profiles: your dog’s name, breed, age, weight, sex, spay/neuter status, activity level, health conditions, allergies, medications, microchip ID, veterinarian contact, and photos that you choose to add.
• Walk & care activity: walk logs, durations, distances, potty logs, calorie estimates, bookings, reviews, and photos taken during a walk. Photos are covered in detail in section 4.
• Precise location (GPS): when you actively record a walk, the App may capture the GPS route of that walk to map it and estimate distance. Location is collected only during an active walk you start; your ZIP code is used to connect you with your local community.
• Payment information: payments are processed by our payment provider (Stripe). We do not store full card numbers; we receive limited transaction details (e.g., status, amount, last 4 digits).
• Walker verification: if you apply to be a walker, we may collect information needed for a background check processed by our screening provider.
• Communications & device data: in-app notifications, messages, support requests, and basic technical/usage data needed to operate and secure the service.

2. How we use information

• Provide, operate, and improve the service (dog profiles, walks, bookings, recommendations).
• Generate breed-aware walk-time, calorie, and dietary/safety information (educational only — not veterinary advice).
• Match owners with walkers/caregivers and facilitate bookings and payments.
• Send service notifications (e.g., walk complete, booking updates) and respond to support.
• Maintain safety, prevent fraud/abuse, and comply with legal obligations.

3. How we share information

We do not sell your personal information. We share it only:

• Between users to fulfill a booking: when you book a walker/caregiver, the information needed to perform the service (e.g., dog details, walk location/time) is shared with that provider, and vice-versa.
• With service providers who process data on our behalf under contract, including payment processing (Stripe), walker background checks, email and SMS delivery, and map/geocoding services.
• With the people you choose, when you share a photo — see section 4, which explains exactly what is shared and what is not.
• For legal reasons — to comply with the law, enforce our Terms, or protect the rights, safety, and property of users and the public.

4. Photos

Photos deserve their own section, because a photo of a dog is usually taken outside the home that dog lives in, and a phone writes more into the file than the picture.

What we store

• The photo as your phone or browser sent it. For a photo in your album or on a walk we do not resize it, re-save it, or strip anything out of it when you upload; whatever information the file carries when it reaches us stays on that stored copy. A photo you post straight to the public Showcase feed (자랑하기) is the exception — we re-save and strip that one when you post it.
• A small thumbnail of it, for the grid views.
• A stripped copy, and a thumbnail of that copy — made only when you share the photo, and deleted when you stop, unless a moderator has kept it as evidence for an open report. So a photo you never share is two files, and a shared photo is four.
• Beside the picture: who uploaded it, when, how large it is, and what kind of image it actually is — read from the bytes themselves, not from what the uploading app claimed. There is no caption field and no location field. For a photo taken on a walk we also store which walk it belongs to, which is how it reaches the owner and the walker on that walk.
• One line per upload recording that you uploaded something and when, so we can count uploads against the daily limit. That line stays even after the photo is deleted, so deleting a photo does not buy back an upload.

Location information inside the file

Phones normally write GPS coordinates, the camera, and the exact second into every photo. The American Dogs app re-saves each photo on your own phone before it leaves — a JPEG with none of that information in it — and the website does the same inside your browser. There is one exception we want you to know about: if your browser cannot read the file at all (this happens with Apple’s HEIC photos in browsers other than Safari), the website uploads the original file untouched. We do not strip a stored original on our side, so a stored original may still carry the place it was taken. It is never the copy we put in a feed — see below — though the walker who led a walk, and anyone holding a walk report link you switched on, are served the photos on that walk as you uploaded them.

What other people are served

• Never your original, in a feed. When you share a photo we build a separate file from the picture alone: it is decoded to pixels, everything the camera wrote into the file — where it was taken, which phone took it, and when — is dropped, and it is saved fresh as a JPEG. If we cannot read your file well enough to do that, we refuse to share it rather than publish it as it is. Two cases are not covered by this. Photos posted straight to the public Showcase feed (자랑하기) before the date at the top of this page were never re-saved, and still carry whatever their phone wrote into them — if one of yours is in that feed and you would rather it were not, open the post and choose Delete. And the photos on a walk are served to the walker who led it, and on a walk report link you switch on, exactly as they were uploaded.
• The feeds show very little. A photo in a friends or neighborhood feed carries the picture, your dogs’ names, and when it was shared. No owner name, no walk, no location. Your name appears only when someone opens the photo.
• A photo’s web address is a long random string, and it is not password-protected. Anyone holding that address can open the shared copy while the photo is shared, even if they are not your friend, not in your neighborhood, not signed in, or blocked by you. The friends and neighborhood settings decide whose feed a photo appears in — they do not stop a forwarded link.
• Stopping sharing kills the address. Un-sharing a photo deletes the shared copy and its address; sharing the photo again later makes a new copy at a new address. Narrowing who a photo is shared with does both at once — the old copy and address go, and a new copy is made for the smaller audience. Either way a link you gave out earlier stops working. Neither can take back a copy somebody already saved to their own device.
• Your originals have addresses too, also long and random, also not password-protected. We never list an album photo’s address to anyone but you. Photos on a walk are the exception: the walker who led the walk is shown them, and if the walk’s owner turns on the shareable walk report link, that page shows the walk’s photos — as uploaded — and the walk’s route to anyone holding the link, without an account. The owner can switch the link off again at any time.

Neighborhood, and the walk route

• When you first share a photo with your neighborhood or wider, we record which neighborhood you were in at that moment. It stays as recorded for as long as that photo is shared — it does not follow you if you move — and it is erased when you stop sharing. It is what puts the photo in one neighborhood’s list, and it means someone seeing your photo in their neighborhood feed learns you shared it into that neighborhood.
• A walk’s GPS route is never attached to a shared photo. The route is stored with the walk itself and shown to you, to the walker who led that walk, and on the shareable walk report link if you turn it on — never with a photo in a feed.

If a photo is reported

A reported photo is normally hidden from other people while a person looks at it, and you are told. (A report sent from an older version of the app names the member rather than the photo, so it cannot hide anything by itself; we act on those by hand.) Your own copy stays in your album throughout. If it is taken out of the shared lists, only the shared copy is deleted — your original stays with you, though it cannot be shared again afterwards. A moderator may instead keep the shared copy as evidence for an open report. The report itself, and the record of what was decided about it, are kept afterwards, including after the photo is deleted and after an account is closed. We never tell you who reported a photo, and we never tell a reporter what happened to one.

5. Data retention

We keep your information for as long as your account is active or as needed to provide the service, comply with legal obligations, resolve disputes, and enforce agreements. When you delete your account, we delete or de-identify your personal information except where retention is required by law (e.g., transaction records), or where section 6 says otherwise.

When a photo file actually goes. Deleting or un-sharing a photo puts its files in a deletion queue in the same step that changes the record, and we try to delete them immediately afterwards — normally within seconds. If our storage is briefly unreachable, a background job keeps retrying, so in the worst case it takes minutes to a day rather than seconds. If a queued file turns out to still be in use by another record, we keep the file and drop it from the queue.

We have not set a fixed retention period for reports and for the record of moderator decisions. They are kept as a lasting record, by design, so that a decision can be reviewed later.

6. Deleting your account

When you delete your account:

• Every photo in your album is deleted, and so is every photo on a walk you own, whoever took it. Their files are queued for deletion as described above.
• Photos you took as a walker, on somebody else’s walk, are not deleted. They stay on that customer’s walk as their record of their own dog. We remove the record that you were the person who uploaded them.
• A photo of yours with an open report against it, or one a moderator kept as evidence, is not deleted. It is forced back to private, hidden from everyone including you, and kept only so the open report can still be decided.
• Photos you posted directly to the public Showcase feed (자랑하기) are not deleted and stay published, with the author shown as “Deleted user”. Delete them yourself in Showcase before you close your account if you do not want that — open the post and choose Delete. A post a moderator has taken down cannot be deleted by you; write to us about that one.
• Your dogs’ profile photos and your walker photo are deleted as files, but the records they hang on stay, because walks, bookings, and payments refer to them.
• Reports you filed stay on record with your name removed; reports filed about you stay as they are.
• Your name becomes “Deleted user”, your email address is replaced with an unusable one, and your phone number, address, and walker bio are erased. Notifications, friendships, and neighborhood memberships are deleted outright. Booking and payment records are kept, without your details, for legal and financial reasons.

7. Your choices & rights

• Access & update: view and edit your account, dogs, and profile in the App.
• Delete your account: you can do this yourself, straight away. On the website, open My Account and choose “Delete my account”; in the app, open Edit profile and choose Delete account. What happens then is set out in section 6. If you can no longer sign in, email info@fabrechew.com from your account email address (subject: “Delete my account”) and we will verify and do it for you.
• Your photos: you can change a photo’s audience or stop sharing it at any time from your album, and you can delete it there.
• Location: you can disable location permission in your device settings; some walk-tracking features may not work without it.
• Marketing: service messages are required to run the platform; any optional marketing messages can be opted out of.

8. Security

We use reasonable administrative, technical, and physical safeguards (including encryption in transit and encrypted/hashed credentials) to protect your information. No method of transmission or storage is 100% secure, so we cannot guarantee absolute security.

9. Children

American Dogs is for adults. You must be 18 or over to hold an account, the American Dogs app and the American Dogs website both ask you to confirm that before an account is created, and the Service is neither directed to nor intended for anyone under 18. We do not knowingly collect personal information from a minor. If you believe a minor has an account or has given us information, email info@fabrechew.com and we will close the account and delete the information. Our child-safety standards, including how to report material involving a child, are on the Child Safety Standards page.

10. Changes to this Policy

We may update this Policy from time to time. We will post the updated version here and revise the “Last updated” date. Material changes may be communicated in the App or by email.

11. Contact us

Fabrechew LLC
Email: info@fabrechew.com

This Policy applies to the American Dogs mobile app and website.